ITP

Dr Hisaaki Kawamura in University of Grenoble I, France

[Part II. – 04/07/2008 – ]

First thing I know is that the time has passed quickly and I've been here for about two months now. In June, the weather has stabilized and it's getting hotter in Grenoble. The days grow longer and I was surprised that sun goes down at about 9:00pm. On weekends, we went on excursions to the mountain St Eynard, the river Isere and some other places in Grenoble. When I went to St Eynard, the top of the mountain commands an extensive prospect of this area.
I also visited Fort de la Bastille by an aerial tramway which is called Telepherique. It was built in the 16th century in order to defend the country against various enemies. I saw a wonderful view of the center of the city from the observatory. It takes just 15-minutes by the tram from my place, and then I often visit there for a short excursion. In the vacation season, this place is usually packed with many tourists. Although about two months of my stay here has passed already, there are still a lot of things to see. I'm sure I'll have a good time for the rest of my stay here.

On the top of St Eynard

A donkey on the hillside

The Chartreuse

A distant view of Grenoble

Téléphérique

Fort de la Bastille

As for my research activities, I often have a seminar with Professor Alexei Pantchichkine, Siegfried Boecherer, Franchesco Chiera and Kirill Vankov, and discuss about Siegel Eisenstein series, Miyawaki lifts and special values of Spinor L-functions attached to some Siegel modular forms of higher genus. In addition, we participated a conference "Clermont-Grenoble Meeting on Analytic Number Theory" at Clermont-Ferrand from 21st June 2008 to 24th June 2008. The conference was a little short but very exciting for me. I gave two talks there and I was really impressed by many interesting talks given by the other speakers. Clermont-Ferrand is one of the oldest cities in France, which is famous for the birthplace of the philosopher Blaise Pascal. I really enjoyed visiting some historical spots after dinner during my stay. In particular, a place which I was strongly impressed was the cathedral of Notre-Dame-du-Porta de l'Assomption, a part of the Route of Santiago de Compostela in France which was designated a World Heritage site. My short stay in Clermont-Ferrand provided me with a nice and different kind of experience from Grenoble. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the organizers for their kind hospitalities.

Cathedral of Notre-Dame-du-Porta de l'Assomption

Central park of Clermont-Ferrand

The town in front of the cathedral

Shortly after we came back to Grenoble, Professor Siegfried left here at the end of June. He kindly gave me many valuable suggestions. I now regret that I should have discussed with him more during his stay, but fortunately we'll be able to reunite at the conference in Bonn, Germany soon. Anyway, I've been so happy to spend a good time with him in Grenoble and I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for his kindness.